Ireland are cricket’s European champions!

As England crashed out of the World Cup after a disastrous defeat against Bangladesh, Ireland could make a claim to be one day cricket champions of Europe!

While Ireland's hopes of progress in the World Cup is alive and well, their celebrated neighbours are heading home after an England side led by Irishman Eoin Morgan were consigned to a group-stage exit, alongside the likes of the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, after failing to chase down 275 for seven.

It was an achievable target just large enough to tease the nerves out of a chastened England team as they were bowled out for 260 in 48.3 overs.

England had some reason to feel aggrieved, however, after Chris Jordan was contentiously adjudged run out by third umpire Simon Fry after Jos Buttler had kick-started a rousing comeback with 65 from 52 balls.

"We've picked guys who can play a brand of cricket that if we performed we could win this World Cup but ultimately we haven't performed," Dubliner Morgan stated.

"It's pretty poor, obviously to be knocked out of a World Cup this early is unbelievably disappointing.

"I'm gutted at the moment. We've struggled and fought away since we arrived here.

"One of our big things was to fight quite hard and to try and get through to the quarter-finals and then from there fight our way through the last three games but obviously that's not meant to be."

He added: "It ultimately comes down to performance and today was an example of where some of our guys performed but we didn't perform as a unit and we've done it for quite a while now.

"Since we've landed in Australia we've tried to address that problem but it hasn't worked.

"Our expectations are a lot higher than the way we've performed so that's extremely disappointing. There'll be an inquest over the next few weeks as to what happened and what went wrong and then we'll go from there."

England batsman Kevin Pietersen – who was sacked for creating a bad vibe in the dressing room last year – was quick to respond on his Twitter feed with this message.

I CANNOT BELIVE THIS! I JUST CANNOT! But, well done Bangladesh! You deserved it! #ENGvBAN